Joel Schumacher

The Director’s Unique Take on the Barn in California

For his retreat in Carpinteria, California, film director Joel Schumacher wanted a rustic look with modern comforts. He called upon architect Don Nulty, who created a new residence that incorporated wood from several 200-year-old disassembled barns. The entrance.

An antique bust and a figurative oil painting rest on a worktable in the living room. The basket is from Ralph Lauren Home.

“The living room is inspired by Will Rogers’s house in Los Angeles,” notes Schumacher. Beams from the old barns frame one of the room’s two fireplaces, above which are a Russian landscape and an Art Déco cement vase. The table is made from a New York manhole cover.

A trellis-covered terrace is just off the breakfast room. “The chairs and accessories are from all over the world,” says the director. “There are two large wood tables outside. We can gather around one or push them together to accommodate more guests.”

Schumacher’s bedroom is housed in the structure built from what he calls the brown barn, which is connected to the main house. Santa Barbara-based landscape designer Eric Nagelmann surrounded the building as well as the entire compound with grasses and shrubs.

The rear elevation. From left are the red barn, the breakfast room, the gray barn and the brown barn.

African beaded kings’ and queens’ armchairs flank the entrance to Schumacher’s bedroom. “The Beacon blankets and Native American rugs are from everywhere,” he recalls. “I’ve been collecting them from flea markets, swap meets and the like since 1971.”

The black-bottomed pool—“based on Bruce Weber and Nan Bush’s cement watering hole on their gorgeous Montana ranch”—looks out to the ocean.